Phone call from Putin led to end of Maidan bloodshed

A woman cries as she leaves flowers in Independence Square where dozens of protestors were killed in clashes with riot police last weekGetty Images

The voice on the phone that persuaded President Yanukovych to give ground and end the bloodshed in Kiev last week belonged to an unexpected peacemaker: Vladimir Putin.

Russia’s involvement in Ukraine’s three-month political crisis has often been depicted as a spoiling role, but, according to Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, it was President Putin’s intervention that proved decisive when the tension was at its height.

President Yanukovych was still stubbornly “fighting hard to preserve whatever he could and yield the least” in ­negotiations with opposition leaders and European diplomats that ran through Thursday night and into Friday, after snipers killed scores of protesters in Kiev. With the city at risk of exploding again at any moment, as it had after an ineffective truce agreed…